Easily Create Black and White Charts with SPSS Statistics 25

Charting was drastically updated as a major feature in SPSS Statistics 25 and Subscription, but we’ve maintained the ability to create black and charts for publication purposes. There are two easy ways to do this.

Option 1) Publication Gray template shipped with SPSS Statistics

First option:
Use the “Publication Gray” template shipped with every copy of 25 and Subscription. This file is named “PublicationGray.sgt” (search your system for the correct location for your operating system). You can easily specify this file while building the chart on the Chart Appearance tab.

Specifying a chart template

Second option:
Use patterns instead of colors. By navigating to the overall SPSS Statistics options, you can ask SPSS to generate charts with patterns instead of colors. This option is found within the Charts tab.

Location in the options menu to use patterns instead of colors

This option will default in a black and white patterned charts. If you prefer borders on all of your charts, you can use this template to generate the below chart.

Charting in SPSS Statistics is incredibly flexible, so you can edit these charts after creation to change nearly every attribute, then save a template of that chart for future use. Finally, keep in mind exporting your chart as a PDF will yield the highest quality.

I would like to suggest one improvement for bar chart examples. In teh late 70s or early 80 Bill Cleveland a Bell labs demonstrated that people more accurately read bar graphs where the bars are horizontal. My rationale for this is that our eyes are beside each other. This is similar to the reason that 2 antenna radar and laser systems have better resolution when the antennae are aligned horizontally.